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Kiss And Motley Crue To Rock At DTE

By: Bill McAllister

All week on the Stoney and Bill Show we've been giving tickets away to the Kiss/Motley Crue concert at DTE Energy Music Theater on September 5th. I saw Motley Crue back in the late 1980's at the Joe Louis Arena but long before that I saw KISS at the old Olympia when I was 14-years old. KISS was the very first concert I ever attended and it was also the first time I ever heard the phrase "contact buzz" (whatever that means). I had seen the Jackson 5 at the State Fair when I was 8-years old and was forced to see Dionne Warwick with the DSO when I was eleven years old...so rock and roll. But seeing KISS was my first concert without my parents and that made it a completely surreal experience in my young life.

First of all, my friend Rick's mom dropped me, Rick and a couple of our friends off at Olympia and said, "I'll be out front when the show is over"...Ok, there is no way I would ever drop my kids off at a concert nowadays. And I know this is going to sound hypocritical but it was a different time. My parents, who were very conservative, didn't think twice about letting me go to the show. They were friends with Rick's parents and it was no big deal. They knew we would be fine.

We walked into the venue and all you saw were people (mostly dudes) wearing KISS t-shirts and some were wearing KISS make-up. Gene Simmons seemed to be the design of choice. We made our way to our seats and sat down, marveling at the scene around us. A sea of people waiting for, what we considered, the greatest rock and roll band in the world. This was years before I realized KISS was just a glorified garage band but at the time, there was no convincing me otherwise. As for the aforementioned contact buzz, I remember feeling a little light-headed and was worried that if I still felt this way when I got home, my parents were going to send me to "juvey".

The concert began with such an explosion of energy; I had never seen anything like it. Fire, lights, pyrotechnics, the works! Gene, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss looked just like they did on the album cover. It was awesome!

So, if you're not doing anything September 5th and you would like to relive a little bit of your youth, check out Kiss and Motley Crue at DTE...who knows, you might even get a contact buzz.

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